This book is at least ½ reality and perhaps ½ fiction, but even if it isn't fiction, it may be read as an interesting and sort of biographical novel, full of intriguing facts about the cultural heritage of the Soviet Union and its dark shadows. Award-winning author Lara Vapnyar delivers an unabashedly frank and darkly comic tale of coming-of-age in middle age. Divide Me by Zero is almost unclassifiable, a stylistically original, genre-defying mix of classic Russian novel, American self-help book, Soviet math textbook, sly writing manual, and, at its center, an intense romance. Vapnyar is an enormously engaging writer with a wealth of material to draw from: the absurdities of modern life, of marriage and motherhood, the Soviet Union and the United States: the list seems endless. It’s almost impossible to put the book down without devouring it in one sitting. A poignant, vivid, and frequently funny novel.